Posts Tagged ‘aviation scholarships’

I’ve had great fun as President of the Aero Club of Northern California for the past 6 months. Local clubs and chapters are one of the many fun aspects of aviation and you probably already belong to one or more. If you’re not actively involved in running and/or participating in a club, please consider jumping in with both feet and becoming more involved. And if you’re in Northern California, please join our Aero Club and/or Like us on Facebook.

Clubs need your help. Another local club President told me that he volunteered a couple of years ago to be President “because he didn’t want to see the club fold.” As it was, the club hadn’t filed their required form 990 or 990N with the IRS for the prior 3 years, so it lost its 501(c)(3) non-profit status and now has to go through the application process again. Keeping track of those kinds of details are important for any non-profit club or organization. But how do you do that, when activity waxes and wanes over time and club officers come and go? By the way, that club is growing once again.

I still shake my head when I think of another local club I’ve belonged to in the past. At the first meeting of the year I attended, probably the January or February meeting, the newly elected President walked up to me and literally, the first words he said were, “We haven’t got your check yet.” Well, hello, nice to see you as well too. The art of warmly greeting and welcoming one of a club’s most precious resources—its members—was totally lost upon this fellow. As you might guess, the club didn’t do very well that year.

Earlier this year, I walked our board of directors through the 3 Ms: Members, Manpower, and Money. Without these, it’s hard for a club to grow and succeed.

We’re using the 3 Ms to focus our activities and so far it’s working. Membership is up by 60% over last year and we’re only halfway into the year.

Members has two important elements. First, we have to attract potential members and convince them to part with $40 each year to become a member, which is a non-trivial task. To do that, we have to have the second element in place: member programs and events attractive to members and potential members.

From a numbers perspective, our club has held just two events a year for the last few years. But they are outstanding events. The annual Crystal Eagle Award dinner is a world-class event that’s carefully planned for 8 months. Each dinner honors an individual whose accomplishments have significantly contributed to the advancement of aviation or space technology. The list of past recipients reads like a Who’s Who list of famous aviators and astronauts.

The “Eagle” is a large, beautiful piece of crystal glass we import from Italy. Our members then professionally mount it on a block of Redwood with a plaque. The dinner is also a fundraiser, raising money for scholarships that we award to students in S.F. Bay area aviation college programs.

This year, we have five events on the calendar, a significant increase over last year. We’re also moving toward a school year calendar of events, leaving the summer open for planning. That’s a practice we learned from the Aero Club of New England, which was founded over a hundred years ago! By the way, Aero Clubs are regional affiliate clubs of the NAA, the National Aeronautic Association. Check to see if one of the six regional Aero Clubs is located near you.

In addition to Members, a club needs Manpower, or volunteers. For the last few years, our board of directors did most of our club’s work. But that’s a formula for burnout, especially as we grow. Now, we never miss an opportunity to ask members to volunteer, so we can match them up with tasks to be done. We still have a long way to go in this area, but we’re making progress.

The last M is for Money. Obviously, any organization has to be able to cover its expenses. Our goal is to set member dues at a level that covers fixed expenses, so all additional money we raise can go to the scholarship fund. The silent auction, held at our annual dinner, is our most productive source of scholarship funds. There’s undoubtedly more we can do to raise money, but our initial focus is on improving the other two Ms first.

As I talk with other local club Presidents, I hear consistent themes. Members are getting older, it’s hard to find new younger members, and it’s difficult to find speakers for their regular monthly meetings.

We’ve taken a different approach to meetings. While the board of directors meets monthly, there are no regular monthly meetings for members! Members only meet at our major events, typically a luncheon presentation, dinner, or group tour. That takes the pressure off having to come up with an amazing speaker every four and a half weeks. Since the event dates are essentially random, members who might have a conflict with a regular monthly meeting can still attend. While they may have an occasional conflict with an event, at least they won’t have a conflict for every club meeting.

What challenges do your local clubs face and what solutions have you found?

Kicking off the shiny new year by sharing some things that I’m looking forward to in 2014. What excites me about these developments is their potential to have far-reaching impact on the aviation community and the industry that supports it.

ICON A5

ICON gets a lot of flack from the traditionalists in the aviation community. But with with first pre-production aircraft on track to be completed in mid-2014, and the first deliveries of production aircraft planned later this year, this is a product is looking less like vaporware everyday. Partnering up with Cirrus Aircraft (Folks who know a lot of about building composite aircraft) for production seems like such a smart move. Why re-invent production techniques when you’re reinventing the experience of flying for the fun of it?

A modern, clean sheet aircraft design which reimagines what flying for fun can be has a ton of potential. The ICON A5 is product which feels like a mashup of a jet ski and a seaplane to offer something completely new. Team ICON has focused their efforts not on the dwindling traditional aviation community, but on a much broader market for recreational motorsports. Everything ICON does is feel more at home at luxury motorsport dealership, not the stodgy milquetoast spaces we associate with today’s aviation brands.

Ditching the airspeed indicator, for a far more intuitive Angle Of Attack system is a great example of how this is a product designed for folks who aren’t pilots. (Yet.)

No single product I know of has as much potential to suck otherwise unsuspecting “civilians” into the aviation lifestyle.

Cessna 182 Turbo Skylane JT-A

I love this airplane. The new JTA-A even looks better. As the old saying goes, the C-182 Skylane isn’t great at anything, but it’s good at everything. This is product where the world called, and Cessna listened. A proven legacy airframe, is getting a new heart. This bird sips Jet-A.

Bolting a SMA SR305-230 diesel engine and a new cowling onto this workhorse airframe should be a winner. Burning Jet-A gets you 30-to-40-percent lower fuel burn per hour, faster cruise, better climb, and no mixture control to futz with.

Cessna knows the market for newly built light aircraft is overseas, and anything burning avgas is going to have limited utility due to the constraints on 100LL infrastructure around the world. This is the year the market makes the the move to Jet-A.

Redhawk 172

On the other end of the spectrum, the folks at Redbird (Folks who have done a great job bringing some great training technology in reach of far more flight schools than ever before.) are taking a different approach. Back in the 1970’s when the manufactures were churning out airframes at a rate that made the efficient to build, they were relatively affordable to buy. The folks at Redbird are essential recycling legacy airframes to make training aircraft affordable again.

With the cost of a newly built 172 often climbing out of the reach of many flight schools, Redbird will start remanufacturing old 172s, stripping them down to the bare metal, and offering 172 Redhawks to the training industry.

They’ll start by hanging Continental‘s Centurion turbo-diesel engine, which sips Jet-A at just 4.5 gallons per hour, (Again, more Jet-A) install Aspen Avionics’ Evolution glass panel in a new interior, and new paint. Everything about the Redhawk will be tuned for the demands of a busy flight school.

Redhawk will be a package solution for flight schools. Including insurance, leasing “power by the hour,” with an innovative lease program through partner Brown Aviation. This could mean that more schools could get better access to more modern equipment. Flight schools will be free to concentrate on finding customers, not financing. The beta program starts in Spring.

Mooney is Back

Just when it seems like the idea of building airplanes designed for personal transportation seems to be going the way of the betamax, Mooney is starting the production lines back up this year.

These are some really nice traveling machines. Simple trainers they are not. They don’t have all the features you find in more modern designs, but if the prices can be kept reasonable, they could be competitive again.

This is a product with a lot of fans. It’s nice to see another option in the marketplace of aircraft well suited to private aviation.

Space Tourism

Starting in 2014. Folks who bought a ticket will starting climbing aboard rocket ships that will take them into space.

Now I won’t be able to afford a ride, (for a long while) but then again I probably wouldn’t have been able to afford to buy a ticket on the earliest airlines 100 years ago either. Virgin Galactic will commence sub-orbital hops above the Kármán line, with a view of the curvature of the earth, and some zero G thrown in for good measure.

Sir Branson has compared SpaceShipTwo to the Ford Trimotor of of our time. I’m good with that. Mostly because I can’t wait to see what they come up with next.

Demo Teams Back In Action

Air shows are the largest outdoor professional sports in North America. These performances and static displays are the backbone of the air show experience. Last year’s sequestration debacle caused the outright cancellation of many air shows around the country.

Now the economic impact aside, the impact to recruiting can be debated other places…

…but the impact on inspiration is clear. The inspiration air shows deliver have a huge impact on aviation, aerospace more broadly, and across the board STEM education is huge.

Nothing delivers the tonnage of inspiration like an air show.

…and if you don’t like air shows, we just can’t be friends.

So that’s what I’m looking forward to. How about you? What did I miss? What do you look forward to the most?

I once interviewed an airline pilot who absolutely did not want anyone to know that a scholarship for a jet type-rating had been the catalyst for that person to reach the right seat on a Boeing. That pilot feared reprisal from the other pilots at work, and for good reason. There were pilots at the airline that were known for hazing those they felt had not “earned” their way to the jet cockpit.

If those hazers had only spent a little time on a scholarship committee with any one of the numerous organizations, including AOPA, that solicit and administrate these aviation scholarships, then they might change their tune. I spent years reading and “grading” applicants for Women in Aviation, International’s scholarships and I can tell you that 90 percent of those who apply, especially at the upper realm (Boeing 737 and Lear 45 type ratings) are prodigiously over-qualified for that which they apply. And 100 percent of those who are awarded said scholarships are not just deserving of them, they typically perform well ahead of their peers in both the classroom and the cockpit. It is too bad the scholarship winners can’t challenge the hazers to a “fly-off.” I think we’d see who the best pilots were, then.

Airlines, by the way, know all this—which is why they offer scholarships. One year, during the awards ceremony for the Women in Aviation, International scholarships, then Chief Pilot at American Airlines Cecil Ewell awarded the four type-rating scholarships that the company had promised, and then called the 10 runners-up onto the stage. He smiled at them, and applauded them for applying for the awards, and told them that they all were over-qualified for positions as pilots at American Airlines. “So,” he said, “I can’t offer you scholarships, because those have already been awarded. I can, however, offer you jobs. Show up Monday, fly your simulator test, and if you pass that you’ll be processed.” That was that. Ten new airline pilots. All qualified or better for their positions. He’d saved his company both time and money by hiring them from their scholarship applications and interviews.

Some people have also quietly bemoaned to me their worries that these scholarship winners don’t appreciate the leg up that they are given in the aviation training world, and don’t advance the way someone who had to pay out of their pocket would. I’d beg to differ there, too, and I’ve got years worth of “Where are they now?” stories that I’ve collected and published to prove it. Scholarship recipients are moving ahead, persevering longer in the profession, even, during economic downturns, perhaps because they might have just a little more in reserve, since they didn’t drain every last penny out of a savings account to obtain their training. Or maybe it is just that they are so determined to make it in aviation. I’m not sure, but I’d bet their success ratio is a heady mix of both, and maybe even a few more reasons. But know this: they succeed in aviation at a rate higher than the general populace.

If we are serious about growing the ranks of aviation and sustaining a vibrant general aviation culture into the next 100 years, we’ve got to pay it forward again and again. There are terrific opportunities for qualified individuals of all walks in life to step into aviation and advance out there. Look them up at www.aopa.org, www.eaa.org, www.nbaa.org, www.wai.org and more. Google “aviation scholarships” and send the results to someone you know with a dream. Then take your place among the ranks of those who want to help.